Thank you for your interesting essay. It is not clear to us why the proposed mechanism will be less random that the one provided by outcomes of quantum measurements. In our view it is not enough to have under determined or random results in order to have freedom of choice.

    I agree John Templetons conception has been rather lost, but peer pressure is not to be radical and for loyalty to colleagues. It would take a great leader to resist those. Having scored at or near the top many times I have little expectation of change. Bohrs 'But is it crazy ENOUGH to be true' isn't reflected in scoring criteria at all, except as 'interest'. So much for encouraging advancement!

    Yes, Galaxy structure is complex with many theories and masses of data but still no temporal evolutionary sequence or derivation of growth in mass or bars (most spirals have visible central bars) apart from mine, which is a touch too far from doctrine for most editors. Astronomers are often too focused to worry about theory which they see as lagging by decades (and few make good theorists!) Indeed if you talk in the language of your paper they'll roll their eyes and look to the heavens (a habit!).

    They do have a point. Laura Mersini Haughton has debagged the old 'Black Hole' concepts and AGN's themselves are now well understood in morphological terms. The core torus has counter rotating 'helicoil' dynamics which accelerate the matter, finally 'ripping it apart' completely at the cusp where the contraflow jets emanate. Sure much 'information' is lost in the particle re-ionization, but total matter actually increases due to new condensation by shear at the column collimations. Sir Martin Rees first discussed this in the 1960's! The growth in the Galaxy mass function over ~10Gyr could be explained if with each quasar cycle the new iteration has such higher mass.

    Your explanation is rather off. For 'radiation pressure' read momentum (the inner collimated jet pulses are found at at up to 46c in the ambient frame). Imagine a spinning ballerina; 'Accreting her mass (arms) inwards increases spin speed, except the mas is ejected up & down. That is in fact a nuclear tokamak! And yes, the outflows lead to new star formation at the head of the column of jet matter, which are the earliest stars of the new iteration (I identify as the ends of the 'bar' of a new open barred spiral, from which the arms trail.

    I suspect ALL cosmology should now be 'observational' as we now have massive observational powers and overwhelming data. With Gaia running and the James Webb on stream soon Earth needs more population to handle the data!

    I hope you're now out of the (Lyman Alpha?) forest with your flu.

    If you want 'radical', deriving all QM's predictions classically! check out my essay.

    Best

    Peter

    I remember something about Mersini Haughton a few years ago. I think she had some idea about how black holes never form. I think that is not upheld much, or at least I have not heard any follow on with that.

    I will try to get to your paper some time today. I have been pretty tied up with things. Also my interest in this whole affair has been a bit low. I now see that my essay dropped a bit more once again. I will though try to read yours and a couple other essays today.

    Cheers LC

    The main physics of interest to me is in the second and third sections. I appealed to some work I did a few years ago on MH spacetimes and hyper-computation. This gets comparatively speculative at this point, but it centers around the role of the Chaitin probability for halting, which is itself not generally computable. In a hypercomputation framework this will be either 0 or 1 for any input Turing machine or algorithm. However, Hawking radiation prevents eternal black holes, so while the Chaitin halting probability is changed it is not generally computable. I agree there is some open question here, but that was in many ways what I wanted to offer. This is a possible route for exploration on this matter, not that this is some complete solution to the problem.

    LC

    Lawrence

    Laura et al's paper was very recent and well respected. I've seen no refutation of her sound mathematical proof though of course some with inflexible brains are shocked so wave their arms and complain!

    Thanks for your comments on mine. My first few finalist papers of course unravelled implied paradox in SR. Testing that 'fermion re-emission at local c' Discrete Field model against QM led simply to the compatible classic derivation, both consistent with all findings! (please do challenge that with specifics.) I copy my response there below;;;

    Thanks for the comments. You did what the essay suggests most do; make an assumption the model contravenes the (familiar) Bell inequality (so the others too) without using analysis. It doesn't. There are no 'hidden variables'. It simply uses different starting assumptions, of the type and in the way Bell specifically anticipated would solve the problem; "..lattice fermion numbers.." (see the key Bell quotes in my post yesterday in Jack Sarfatti's string).

    The problem is most don't understand QM well enough to dare any 'Kings new clothes' challenge, and those that do understand the theory have 'bought it' flaws and all. Bell knew circumvention must be possible; Q;"...the new way of seeing things will involve an imaginative leap that will astonish us. In any case it seems that the quantum mechanical description will be superseded." Ch3 p27, and "...the 'Problem of Interpretation of QM' has been encircled. And the solution, invisible from the front, may be seen from the back.." (J Bell 'Speakable..." Ch20 p194)

    I identify precisely that 'astonishing' leap of visualisation, simply hiding before our eyes; TWO state momenta in OAM, with orthogonal complementarity at the pole and equator, producing 'QAM'.

    But we should be entirely scientific; The undeniable fact is that these momenta and the detection process precisely reproduce the full predictions of QM! - which are as the Dirac stacked 'Spinor' pairs; two Cos2 curves inverse and offset by 90o. That is repeatable by anybody with a dynamometer and pair of photomultiplyers!

    Just a wet finger can give a rough approximation. Is a pole going up or down?, and; is any point on the equator 'rotating'. ...No. Both = Zero, but go to max at 90o.

    Have you watched the video? All 'spooky' effects emerge classically. OK 'Astonish' was about right - human brains just don't seem capable of conceiving, so bothering to check, if 2+2 equals 4 if they've been told and believed for decades it equals 3!

    Is yours?

    Best

    Peter

    It is the case here that I am a bit in the minority on this here on the FQXi contest. I will say there was a parallel development from the late 19th century that was popular through the 1920s and still has some popularity today. When Maxwell, Boltzmann and Gibbs laid down the foundations of statistical mechanics it solidified the no-go theorem for perpetual motion machines. There arose a sort of cottage industry to show this physics was wrong and to demonstrate a perpetual motion machine. This waned in the 1930s and 40s, largely because humanity was up to its eyebrows with other problems, which unfortunately seem to be returning. Since the 1970s there has been also a sort of cottage industry that is strikingly similar with respect to quantum mechanics.

    The two trends have some analogous features as well. Thermodynamics has the generating e^{-硫E} = e^{-E/kT} in the partition function, while quantum mechanics has e^{-iEt/徴} in a path integral or as the evolutionary development of a state. The quantum mechanical path integral under a Wick rotation is a partition function in statistical mechanics. The equation or replacement 1/kT = it/徴 with the reciprocal of temperature as Euclidean time. This is a route towards quantum critical points and phase transitions induced by quantum fluctuations.

    The idea of the perpetual motion machine had a bit of motivation with Maxwell's demon, who could open and close a valve between two regions to separate fast and slow moving molecules, However, as Szillard demonstrated this can't be done for free. The demon is a sort of computer who if restricted to resources of the system will not be able to perform this activity. The demon must appeal to outside resources. In doing so entropy over all still increases. Much the same happens in a quantum measurement. A measurement is a quantum decoherent event where superposition or entanglement phase is coupled to an outside system or open world. By this means the density matrix of a quantum system is reduced to diagonal form. However, the actual outcome is not predicted.

    Now enter hidden variables, beables or classical-like descriptions. This would seems to be a way in which the actual outcome is obtained. However, this would imply that a quantum observable has some prior existence or objective outcome independent of the Born rule of quantum mechanics. This is that the spectrum of an observable has a one to one correspondence with probability amplitudes or probabilities. This is really where the fly in the ointment occurs with these ideas. It is a quantum version of the Maxwell demon that can obtain prior information about a system independent of the information = entropy constraints of the system.

    This has connections to other areas of physics, such as black hole quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. Of course in science we do not have proof of things, but only go on the basis of evidence that supports known foundations and models. I have no assurance the future will not have anti-gravity warp drive space travel with sub-quantal instantaneous communications and so forth. On the other hand I have some pretty serious suspicions these will not happen. Since you mentioned Sarfatti, I do not take his ideas about UFOs as real alien spaceships at all seriously along with his claim these demonstrate his various claims.

    Cheers LC

    Lawrence

    I don't blame anyone for not fully 'understanding' QM. Feynman was right, but there is no comparison with ANY other case. In this case 'interpretations' don't matter as a simple, repeatable and irrefutable experimental proof trumps everything. All illogicality then evaporates.

    The challenge is simply to reproduce the orthogonal complementary pairs of Cos[sup2 curves with some physical mechanism. Bell and others show 'hidden variables can't do it, but I show Bell was on the right track with his idea that 'fermion numbers" might be the way, somehow.

    I was a complex 3-part solution which has taken time to put together (the last bit was the photomultiplier 3D field 'cascade' amplification, derived then found already proven in QCD!) but now it's done and it works. It reveals a few flaws in the foundations of QM, the key one being NOT adopting Maxwells orthogonal momenta for 'entangled pair' particles. 'Spin up/down superposed' is incomplete and misleading - loosing the logic of the reality.

    Of course although conclusive and irrefutable (you can reproduce it yourself at home, experimentally and mathematically) it stands zero chance of admittance as a new paradigm in the next decade, if at all! Indeed my essay identifies why. Our brains prefer pre-set patterns and reject new alien concepts as they require the much harder 'rational computation' processes. It also takes a real understanding of QM - without completely 'buying' it. A very rare combination it seems! Even the few like Joy Christian have their OWN hypothesis (quite incomplete physically) which blinds them to anything else.

    I'm a realist Lawrence, so not stressed, desperate or wanting kudos. I'm not even entirely convinced mankind is evolutionarily ready for significant improvements in understanding nature. But I shall anyway present it, in my own way, as I do feel some duty not to 'keep it secret'.

    Anyone who's like to collaborate, i.e. with the mathematics etc, is most welcome.

    Very Best

    Peter

    Dear Lawrence,

    I read with pleasure and interest your essay, which builds on advanced ideas on black hole information, holographic principle, computability, open worlds, hyper-Turing machines, Godel's theorem, and consciousness as creativity in the sense of Chaitin and self-reference in the sense of Hofstadter, and proposes new interesting ideas.

    Best regards,

    Cristi

    Dear Lawrence,

    I read with great interest your remarkable essay. Although the more technical parts (such as paragraph 2) are difficult for me, it contains some fascinating insights on the frontiers of scientific research. In particular, I am very interested in the issues of the possibility of a hyper-Turing machine and of the Malament-Hogarth spacetime, that did not know before reading your essay, and about which I will try to know more.

    A question: you speak of a hyper-physical Turing machine as a truncated version of the ideal one. This suggests that the calculation of uncomputable functions, although it is an ideal, may be physically realizable, even if in a partial form. But how? Only in close proximity to blacks holes, or in some other forms?

    One last note: I enjoyed the final reference to Stanislaw Lem, one of my favorite storytellers. The conscious ocean of Solaris is one of the finest inventions of the Twentieth-century literature.

    Cheers, Giovanni

      Hi LC,

      As usual, you released a remarkable contribution. Your idea that an open universe implies the emergence of consciousness is consistent with the anthropic principle.

      Despite the holographic principle and firewall are interesting frameworks, I do not think that they solve the black hole information puzzle. You know that I have my proper semi-classical solution inspired by the work of Bohr and Schrodinger. Also, I do not like the idea to weaken the EP in order that unitary principle of QM holds. In any case, you wrote and intriguing and pleasant Essay deserving the highest score that I am going to give you. Good luck in the Contest.

      Cheers, Ch.

        • [deleted]

        • Post #41

        This is this paper that gives the basics of how hyper-computation occurs in these spacetimes. The Wikepedia website also gives some references, including the paper above.

        The connection with MH spacetimes is really mysterious. The MH spacetime, such as the inner horizon of a Kerr or RN metric black hole, permits for the eternal black hole an infinite bit stream to reach an observer who crosses the inner horizon. The inner horizon is continuous with I^+ = r^в€ћ in the exterior, so this surface permits the infalling observer to witness the fate of the exterior universe. This means that any process outside the black hole that sends a bit stream of its state to the black hole will be received by the infalling observer. At the inner horizon this observer can check whether the system halts or not. Given an arbitrary number of such Turing machines the infalling observer or recording system can serve as a universal Turing machine.

        Now maybe there is something terribly wrong with this. For one thing the black hole has a finite time of existence. Hawking radiation will evaporate even the largest possible black holes in around 10^{110} years. Also the inner horizon is a Cauchy horizon that has possible properties of a singularity. The huge pile up of null geodesics might be a wall of sorts. Also as my essay deals with entangled black holes, it is likely that any black hole is entangled with a vast number of black holes. So any system or observer that crosses r_- or the inner horizon may be by ER = EPR blasted into a vast number of other black hole interiors across a vast number of ER bridges. This is a form of the so called mass inflation singularity. This then limits the hyper-Turing machine; in fact makes it no longer hyper-Turing.

        However, with the Chaitin halting probability this might adjust these probabilities. The Halting probability, called Chaitin's О© number, for the ideal Hyper-Turing case is either 1 or 0, is still uncomputable, but it may be adjusted sufficiently so the probability can be "guessed." We might even think of it as meaning a random probability outcome is adjusted to give yeah or nay for halting with greater fidelity. This is the domain where things are not understood well as I see it.

        The over-arching idea is that what happens in the UV limit, say quantum gravity etc, is dual to what happen in the IR limit, say in the low energy domain of chemistry. So this structure may in some way be fairly common in the universe. It may be common in what we know as biology.

        Thanks for the positive assessment. I will look at your paper today or as soon as possible.

        Cheers LC

        Dear Lawrence,

        I thank you very much for your kind and very detailed response. Now I have really a lot of material for reflection and study. What I need is, alas, time!

        With regard to my paper, you have already posted a positive comment on it. Thanks for this too.

        Cheers, Giovanni

        Thanks for the good word.

        My sense is that the equivalence principle and the unitarity principle are versions of the same thing. Because of this they do not generally hold completely for general experimental conditions. It is really similar to the duality between reality and locality in Bell's theorem. You can have one, but not the other. The same I think happens here in that if you can measure all quantum states in a nondestructive way (weak measurements, etc) you then have some small deformation of the equivalence principle. On the other hand if you measures the EP to complete accuracy this is traded off by some inability to account for quantum states in a unitary manner.

        Cheers LC

        Dear Lawrence Crowell,

        i just read your essay and must say, it is power-packed with several concepts which are hard to grasp at first glance. You seem to follow the maxime that to know what constitutes consciousness, aims and intentions it is necessary to first figure out how the inanimate nature works in detail.

        You state that "This means that a proposition that is a fi xed point of some predicate built from provable and true functions is equivalent to a functional combination of false statements."

        Isn't this a huge drawback to your approach to figure out how the inanimate nature works in detail - to then conclude what within this nature could lead to the phenomenon of consciousness? Your statement reads to me that there could be a whole landscape of inconsistencies, means, false statements which nontheless built - 'at the macrostate' a consistent system! How can one, under these circumstances, develop a realistic theory of consciousness? Does this not need what you - rightfully - wrote, namely that the world is open? I interpret the word open as a dimensional realm that resolves the deterministic character as well as the character of freedom in mathematics by transcending it. Don't you need such a transcendent realm to come from a network of possible false statements to some kind of reliable truth about the world? And if this cannot be done by mathematics alone - because therefore all assumptions which are imposed on a certain mathematical system would have to be necessarily true and not only possibly true - what is left over from the computational picture you describe in your essay?

        Best wishes,

        Stefan Weckbach

          The statement you quote pertains to Loeb's theorem. This is a form of Goedel's theorem, which say that any provability theorem in a mathematical system means the system has an inherent level of inconsistency. This is the odd thing about Doedel's theorem, either a system is incomplete with theorems that are true but unprovable or if everything about the system is provable then the system is inconsistent.

          Very little of human action really involves reason. Largely people base their actions on hunches or simply what feels good. While we have in recent times built a world that depends upon more reasoned and rational thinking, humans generally do not act as such. This might be a serious problem in fact. We seem to have evolved the ability for reasoning, but much of our behavior is based on other things. Often humans are very contradictory. Yet curiously this has served us well in our evolution, as it has for other animals, some of which are fairly intelligent.

          Consciousness is not at all a landscape of consistent statements and rational processes. It is really a cacophony of contradictory impulses, subconscious processes and inner mental images that compete with each other. I think you might agree that while you and I are able to sit down and work on mathematical problems for long periods of time, we also have our times of "stream of consciousness" that often have no particular rational basis.

          I could have maybe gone more into this, but I wanted mostly to lay down the idea that an open world with respect to quantum entanglement leads to the prospect for this sort of functioning that we might identify with life or consciousness.

          Cheers LC

          Dear Lawrence,

          thanks for your answer. I have to ponder about Loeb's theorem and investigate what it really says and how it comes to its conclusions. Doesn't it simply say that 'if P is provable, then P is provable'?

          Best wishes,

          Stefan Weckbach

          Dear Lawrence,

          as I stated my essay forum: very good essay (some misprints) and you got a high vote from me.

          This essay was inspiring for me (I'm also looking for EPR=ER currently). I'm a fan of Popper and an open world. You are certainly right that our essays are related. In my essaymy essay, I also consider networks with underlying hyperbolic structure but only for the signals going through the network. You used the tensor networks to describe the states itself. But nevertheless, we both got similar results. There must be a qualitative change to get intention or wandering towards a goal. Topology change is a good ansatz for this.

          Best

          Torsten

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            • Post #49

            Lawrence, I believe it is to your credit that you appreciate the fundamental question: In what sort of universe is consciousness possible.

            "It might be that consciousness is also a truncated hyper-Turing machine that approximates the ideal of a completely self-referential system that can jump out of an algorithm, or make a leap of imagination." And "The apparent ability of living systems to make choices and to perform actions far more subtle that computation may stem from the open universe..."

            What you and I are writing about in each our own way is expressed in the check required to submit a post, designed to confound a non-conscious spammer.

            That consciousness "can can jump out of an algorithm" and is "far more subtle that computation" is an important insight that seems to be lost on most essayists here. My solution to the question of how such a transcendence (equivalent to your "openness"?) is possible is more prosaic than yours, but maybe more comprehensible. I'd be interested in your evaluation.

              Dammit, it said I was logged in at the bottom of the page....